Hongdao Poetic Language Structure

Since the late nineteenth century, it is obvious that general linguistics, as a vigorous and developing field of study, has been turning its attention more and more to the study of language in literature. As a result of marriage between linguistics and poetics, to revalue the literature from the structuralistic angle makes it possible for Western literary criticism to find a new way, which means that we come to regard poetry as kind of "architecture" made of words. In a way, the distinctive feature of poetry lies in the fact that words and their arrangement, their meaning, their outward and inward form acquire weight and value of their own.During the mid and late Ming Dynasty, Yuan Hongdao, who was against "imitation" and for "expression", was the most important figure in the transformation of poetic structure. There were deep changes in the economic structure and mind structure of society of Ming Dynasty, which is generally regarded as the transforming age in our ancient history. In this paper, we will concentrate on Yuan Hongdao, well known as a thought-provoking poet of Ming Dynasty and give a penetrating inquiry of the relationship between his literary theory and the inward texture of his poems in order to know if the structure of poetry, as a major form of classical refined literature, has come to change and how to change.In chapter one, we intend to set up two kinds of coordinate: one is static coordinate of poetic form, which indicates the structuralistic difference between regular verse and ancient verse; the other is dynamic coordinate of poetic history, which indicates the structuralistic difference between the poetry of "Tang" and "Song". From chapter two to chapter four, we're supposed to probe into the characteristics of linguistic structure of Yuan Hongdao's poetry at the three main levels: phonological structure, grammatical structure, and imagery structure. We also keep our eyes open to the general tendency of stucturalistic change by comparing the poetry of Yuan Hongdao to classical poetry, such as "Tang Poetry"and "Song Poetry". In chapter five, based on integrative wholeness of what's discussed from chapter two to chapter four, we'll concentrate on the overall characteristic of the linguistic structure and the tendency of aesthetic value of Yuan Hongdao's poetry. Finally, in chapter six, we'll deal with the meaning of the open structure of Yuan Hongdao's poetry in the history of his own life and Chinese ancient poetry from a dynamic angle.The linguistic structure of Yuan Hongdao's poems, generally presents itself with a feature of the colloquial, natural and open structure, which points to modern aesthetics in an inward way. The transformation from classical poetry to modern poetry is a result of the far-flung process in which Chinese history of poetry had been developing on its own. The revolutionary spirit in poetic thought of Yuan Hongdao and the open structure of his poetry made a sharp point and an influencing turn in the course of this transformation from classical poetry to modern poetry.